Creating A Software Methodology to Analyze and Preserve Archaeological Legacy Data

Archaeology is experiencing a curation crisis. Much archaeological data sits dormant, inaccessible to most researchers. Computational techniques can revitalize this data by facilitating new analyses. However, the Digital Turn also presents a barrier to analysis: most legacy data is in an analog format with which computers cannot interact. The process of digitizing these records to be machine-readable is extremely time consuming. To address this obstacle to data reuse, I employ a software pipeline to digitize excavation records associated with the Gulkana Site, located in Alaska’s Copper River Basin. This site is important to the Ahtna community and the continuing study of native copper innovation. Preliminary results of this pilot study demonstrate that custom-built software holds promise for facilitating reuse of archaeological excavation data to better meet the FAIR and CARE principles of data management.